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Previously in The Dark Knight III, Batman had returned after years of absence but it turned out that Carrie Kelley was the Batman. Lara and Wonder Woman were disagreeing about where Lara should be. Ray Palmer ended up releasing the residence of the bottled city of Kandor, but it turns out that it was all a trap where a Kryptonian cult killed the residence and then shrank Palmer and is presumed dead. But it turned out that at the end of issue 2, Bruce Wayne was still alive.

The issue opens with Bruce walking into a room narrating about Carrie, and shows that he cares about her. We then continue more narration but also being cut in with clips with news articles of incidents happening over world with the possible invasion from the Kryptonians. Carrie asks if that these attacks mean that if he was no longer dead, and he replies that he doesn’t know since that he doesn’t know what kind of ‘horror’ this is yet. We then get a video of Quar preaching that the Earth is over their end of depression and he then breaks the back of what appears to be a reporter or just a random person and he falls from the sky. Quar then preaches about what happened to Krypton and says that his group was like a dandelion and he then gives one of his ‘children’ a seed that he ingests and the child then divebombs towards the Kremlin and he blows up into what appears to be nuclear explosion. Quar then preaches more about what his children can do and he wants the people of Earth to bow to them as New Gods. In the Batcave, Bruce says that they can’t do this alone and we continue to a two-page spread with panels of news talking about what the Kryptonians had did and how people are dealing with it. But we also get a portion of Bruce and Carrie walking through the snow heading towards the Fortress of Solitude.

Inside the Fortress, Bruce tells Carrie on why Superman is in this state saying that he gave up after the battle with Brainiac and the near destruction of the planet and Bruce whacks the Superman popsicle with a hammer. Bruce then tells Superman that he needs his help since that he is in barley and condition to fight and that the world needs his help. But there is still no reaction from the popsicle. Carrie then chimes in saying that they are wasting their time with him and says that his people are about to enslave the Earth and Carrie goes to leave where we then see crack wound effects and Superman is out of the ice asking about his people and Bruce goes on to show what they were doing.

The micro issue for this is about Green Lantern where we first see him in this weird alien design finding out that that Earth needs his help. We then see Quar wives talking around the Sphinx and Hal appears before them. The wives wonder why he is there and then realise that he is a Lantern and they start coming on to him and manage to trick him into using he ring hand and then one of them blasts off Hal’s hand and takes hand and runs off leaving Hal in the desert.

Back is some city, possibly Gotham, Quar’s children are talking about making the people worship them. Bruce and Carrie are heading back and Bruce notes what Carrie did with Superman making him break out of his popsicle but she isn’t taking credit for it. Some of Quar’s children then head into space and take out satellites. Lara sees Gotham starting in flames and Baal asks if she is not afraid, but she replies saying that she is more curious about Kandor and not afraid. Quar appears and says that his son wasn’t talking about Kandor but of her. Baal says that she is afraid of herself and that she shouldn’t hold herself to her own rules and Quar pretty much starts to brainwash her. We then get a page of Superman falling to his knees with tears in his laser firing eyes.

We then cut over to an emergency meeting with heads of different countries and there deciding whether to start a war with the Kryptoinans but they are undecided but Bruce has his army assembled in the Batcave where he says that he is too easy. Carrie questions it and Bruce replies saying phony bosses will react before they do but there is a new piece that they see that there could be a chance that the world could see a global surrender. Quar and his followers break into the UN meeting in the Pentagon where he wants to get his answer from the world but that gets interrupted by Batman appearing on a screen where he tells him to go to hell with all the screens repeating him saying hell. Quar questions him and Superman appears telling them that ‘you heard them’. Quar then rants a bit about that how he would spend ‘thousands of centuries in thousand hells than be trapped in the glass cage’. He then spits at him and says that he need to be punished. Superman then notices something behind him when a voice says that he is a traitor to his race where it is revealed to be Lara, ending the issue.

Issue four opens with Ray Palmer not dead and apparently at some sort of possible sub-atomic level. Back in Washington, he tells Lara that she is making a mistake and tells her that the world needs protecting but Quar asks her if she agrees with him. She does agree that the world is beautiful but that the ‘ants’ that run it are destroying it. 0ne of Quar followers or possibly Quar asks Superman why he would allow people to do this and he says that he refuses to put himself above humanity and then Lara blasts him through the Washington Memorial. Lara asks him to make a choice but he replies saying that he won’t hit her back, so she whacks him straight into the Lincoln Memorial. Lara keeps asking him to make his decision but Baal tells her that he has already made his decision.

In the Batcave Carrie is having enough of this and suggest that they go help him, but Bruce says that they can’t but suggests that there is one person that can help but they won’t and we find out that Lara beat up Superman for hours, ending it at the Fortress of Solitude where we see a blood trail leading to the door. Superman heads back to the Fortress and we see Quar’s cult following him there where he yells out to Earth that their champion has fallen and puts him on trial for treason. Superman tries to plead to Lara but she just stares at him and the cultists give their passing of the guilty verdict and Quar encases him in Black Matter and they blast the Fortress with their eye-beams. Quar then says that he is going to move onto Gotham and that if Batman doesn’t surrender in 36 hours he would kill them. In the Jungle, we back with Wonder Woman saying that they made her decision and that she doesn’t agree with then and that she doesn’t agree with Bruce and destroys the communicator that Bruce gave her.

In the micro-issue this revolves around Carrie now under the mantle of Batgirl and is basically covering the fallout about the civilians wanting to Batman to submit to the Kryptonians. But the cool thing that did come from this was Carrie throwing a device into the sea and it summons Aquaman on a large Hammerhead Shark and he tells her to get on.

Back on Gotham City Hall, a protest is breaking out with the citizens wanting Batman to surrender. In Commissioner Yindel’s office she monologues off about what has been happening, first that it has been over seven hours since that the power grid went down, she got a bottle of booze and that she realises that now the GCPD is useless and that it took Gotham City twelve hours to realise it. Back in the Batcave Carrie is injecting something into Bruce to help him get around and Bruce gives Carrie a mission. This happens in the micro-issue and he gives her a graduation present, which we also see in the micro-issue. We the see some of the news talking about what happening in Gotham and we also see Flash running in to help but he then gets his legs broken by somebody but he is then rescued by one of Batman’s army. On top of the GCPD, Yindel talks about the people being like ants and other things but Batman appears behind her and gives her the opportunity to do the right thing. The issue ends back with Ray Palmer saying that ‘maybe he can fix this’.

I think that these issues have been rather well done. Having Carrie be the one that helps snap Superman out of his disappointment slump was good and the whole brainwashing that has been done to Lara is rather interesting. But we are only halfway through the series and I think this is the point on where it starts to go a bit sideways.

So, for some reason DC decided to give Frank Miller another stab at writing a Batman series after the stupidity of All Star Batman and Robin, but the good thing about it this time DC did something right, they also had Brain Azzarello on as well to write the book along with Miller. But let’s get on with the review.

The first issue opens with the image of the Bat-suit and a two text boxes. On one simply saying ‘a good death? There’s no such thing’ and on the other side we have a text message chat where two people are talking about how one of them saw Batman but Batman hasn’t been seen in four years. The next two pages basically cover the story on how the he saw the Bat when he was getting trying to get arrested by the cops but they don’t and he manages to get three shots of the Bat taking out the cops. We then get a two-page spread of news personalities reacting to the news about the Batman sighting. We then cut over to the GCPD where we see Commissioner Yindel being introduced to Bailey Travers who gets brought on the GCPD to handle the PR. She hands her a pre-wrote speech for her to say but she ignores it and heads outside to the press conference where reporters ask out questions to her about the return of the Batman.

Then we head over to somewhere in the Amazon Jungle where Wonder Woman is narrating about how the hunting group, I think, are afraid of what is hunting them, which is a weird centaur/minotaur creature that they can’t take down so she runs in, doing a slight Esher Girls pose, and punches it in the face. She then kills the creature and we then discover that she has had another child that she feeds, since that she confirmed that she was pregnant after her and Superman hooked up in The Dark Knight Strikes Again. She arrives back at her kingdom where she is greeted by her people and one of them says that she will take the boy, but she nearly gets killed but Wonder Woman drops the sword in her hands. She gives her son, Johnathan, to Dessa and says that she has a training schedule with Lara but she was wondered off somewhere and that place is the Fortress of Solitude.

With this comic, we also get a micro comic inside that are all one shots that tie into the story that is going on, but I do have one problem and that is the art work shifts a lot from the main book and that is because Miller is the one that draws the micro comics. The first issue is focused around The Atom where we see him fighting against a lizard, he also narrates about some stuff but for the most of it, it’s not necessary. He then comes across a door outlined in a white light and finds a shrunken guy that he can’t hear. But we then see Lara holding Kandor and he asks why she is here with it and she replies that Baal says that they are tired of being small, ending the issue. The only thing I find wrong with this is that its placed wrong in the comic and it should be put a couple of pages later.

Back to the comic itself, Lara enters the Fortress where it appears that she is talking to somebody where she goes on about how that that the artefacts and objects were important and that they meant something that defined the whole and wonders if she was part of the whole and we have a splash page of Superman sitting in a chair completely frozen. She wonders why the ‘ants’ knocked him from the sky and asks if there is anything that she can do and hears a noise coming from somewhere where she find Kandor with a message saying ‘Help Us’ and this wraps back to the Atom micro comic and this is where I think that it should have started.

When then find ourselves back in Gotham City with at the Bat-Signal with Commissioner Yindel standing in front of where we have more text boxes, this time from GX going over bits of news and then Yindel starts narrating to herself. After she is done with the narration a cop comes up and says that they have him, which then leads us to the police chasing down Batman through the streets of Gotham. Batman manages to escape to a fire escape and then drops onto the cop’s car and charges at them. We then get more fighting scenes and then a cop manages to get a lucky shot off on Batman grazing across the cowl. But then the cops use their numbers advantages and we see them with batons in hands wailing on the downed Batman. The cops stop the attack and try to cuff Batman when one of the cop’s notices something strange but Batman punches the cop in the face and takes them all down. Yindel arrives at the scene and tells Batman to freeze and Yindel notices something different about Batman then Batman tries to attack her but she manages to defend herself and cuffs Batman asking Batman where Bruce Wayne is twice and the second time revealing that Batman really is Carrie Kelly, who then says that Bruce Wayne is dead ending issue one.

Issue two opens with Carrie Kelly being put into the back of a police car saying that Bruce Wayne is dead. We then cut to nearly a month later where Yindel is talking with Carrie, known as Jane Doe since she hasn’t spoken since she was incarcerated. She basically tells her that she is going to spend a long time in prison that she would be old as Yindel when she is released and then goes to leave when she finally starts talking. Carrie says that he never recovered and recalls the events that happened after Batman got beaten up by Luthor in Strikes Again and how she spent the past three years being at his bedside until he passed away after one final conversation which is rather a sad and emotional scene in the book. Then we get back to the stupid of the book when Yindel asks what happened to the body and she replies that she ate it, but Yindel doesn’t buy the story but Carrie says that what Yindel believes in doesn’t matter.

Back over to Ray Palmer and Lara she asks him how they didn’t try re-growing Kandor before. Ray says that they did try however they thought that they had all the variables down but the results went wrong. Lara says that Superman believes that he brilliant but Ray says that she isn’t like her father and Lara questions him in which her replies saying that Superman is more human than what she is. Lara replies to that saying that was due to her being raised by Wonder Woman and the Amazons. Baal intervenes saying that she shouldn’t distract Ray from his work. Lara then hears something that turns out that Wonder Woman is calling for her and she leaves Ray and Baal talk some more.

I am going to add the micro comic at this point since that it does ruin the story telling for the next segment. This issue focus around Wonder Woman. We start this off with Lara narrating on how that she wasn’t allowed to see the whole world since that Wonder Woman kept her a secret from the outside world. We then see Wonder Woman shooting at a wooden stump and telling Lara that she is late for her lesson where she tells her that she knows. She throws Lara a staff and Lara narrates about her mother saying that she refuses to be dominated and wouldn’t have it any other way. Wonder Woman tells her that her reactions are slow and Lara pouts which she asks if she said something to make her pout. Lara replies that she finds this boring and unnecessary for her but Wonder Woman replies saying that she is wrong and that this is her life. She then throws a sword to Lara but it just goes into the ground and she goes to attack Lara who easily moves and dodges without much of a care. She asks Lara If she can feel the rush that makes her an Amazon but Lara says that she is not like her and she goes to attack her and the sword shatters with Lara saying that she is a Kryptonian and flies off.

We then cut back over to Yindel and another cop observing Carrie’s transport heading to Blackgate. Carrie narrates to herself about the route that the transport is taking her and she then starts to whistle which then causes thing to happen. The officer with Yindel notes that they are getting an infrared signature in the warehouse and Yindel orders the transport to take evasive action but it is too late and the transport is taken out by a projectile. We then see the Bat-Tank that Carrie manages to stow-away on. This then causes a chase sequence and the Bat-Tank manages to get away from the cops by ramming up the raised bridge.

Back with Ray Palmer he makes his attempt to regrow the people of Kandor and it manages to work this time. But when they are brought onto the Earth there seems to be have a lot of bloodshed. Baal introduces Ray to Quar who they call Kandor saviour. Ray says that he has made a horrible mistake and Quar uses the device that Ray use to regrow them to shrink Ray. As Ray shrinks he says that he can fix this but Baal says no he can’t and kills Ray. Quar preaches about who the people thought that he was mad for his beliefs and destroys the city of Kandor with his heat vision. We then see Carrie walking through the Bat-Cave with Quar narrating saying that he is going to take over the Earth first, but we see that Bruce Wayne isn’t dead ending issue two.

The first two issue are rather well done. The big plus as I said already is that this seems more like a better story than what Dark Knight Strikes Again was and the addition of an additional writer. The art work in whole is also good even with the micro issues. But the only problem that I have with it would be the placement so far for the micro issues since that it does ruin the story telling that the comic already has going since that in issue two the story between Wonder Woman and Lara came in the middle of Carrie escaping from the police. But other than that so far I have found it okay, but we have a six or seven more issues since that I believe that they have extended the run of the series.

So a few days ago I wrote out a brief plan on what I am going to cover for the rest of January and the next few months so that I am not trying to pull posts out of mid-air and I think I am going to be able to keep myself busy for a while. *Note I have put a question mark next to two posts since I am rather uncertain yet about the release dates for Justice League/Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #4 until next month possibly.